Jordan Kobritz

Articles matching tag: Scholarships

“The Times They Are a-Changin’” by
Bob Dylan.
For college coaches, Bob Dylan’s title track to his 1964 album could just as easily apply today. Examples of the changing tide in collegiate athletics abound, the most recent being the termination of Illinois football coach Tim Beckman on the eve of the 2015 season.
At first glance, Beckman’s firing could be attributed to his 12-25 record over three non-descript seasons at Illinois. But the decision to fire Beckman had nothing to do with wins and losses. Earlier this year the University commissioned an investigation after allegations surfaced that Beckman and his staff had influenced medical decisions and mistreated players. The coach was let go even before a final report was issued.

Given a choice, most parents would probably prefer that their children spend more time playing sports and less time playing computer games in the hopes that the former may lead to a college scholarship. Now, the latter may also lead to a free education.
Robert Morris University (RMU) in Chicago and the University of Pikeville (UPike) in Kentucky are the first institutions of higher learning to offer scholarships for what is commonly known as eSports, what laymen refer to as playing computer games. Competitive gaming on the professional level has been around for decades but the collegiate version dates to 2009 when students at Princeton challenged their counterparts at MIT to a match of StarCraft. Around the same time a student at the University of California San Diego started his own team and the two groups decided to form a league which they named the Collegiate Starleague (CSL).